The Scope

Gallente Federation

bleh... first we remove the V skill from iteron V, so everyone and their alt can fly them.Then we nerf one of the few areas where gallente have anything to be proud of.

Today Gallente has the largest T1, 2nd largest T2, 2nd largest freighter/JF, why cant we have nice things.Maybe the other t1 were too far off iteron V in the past, but iteron V required level V skills before getting into, meaning gallente pilots would have to stick with Iteron III for a while, and for a long time in the skill training be behind the other races, and at best would have a extra ship to rig up during the 1months long V train.

Center for Advanced Studies

Gallente Federation

Speaking as someone who stepped out of the tutorial in the hard-earned Iteron, opened the market and contract interfaces and basically do nothing that doesn't involve plying the spacetrade routes...

There should be more than two roles.

Looking at what is actually flown outside the T1 range, its obvious that there is a desire as far as the playerbase is concerned. Cargo capacity, speed and tank are all three important aspects of hauling, and if they're important enough to lead to different choices when it comes to freighters, why wouldn't they do the same at the lower level? This is before we start considering the special abilities of Orcas, Blockade Runners or amusingly fit frigates or T3's.

Hauling - even in highsec - is about more than cargo capacity. It... Worries me that you seem to be thinkingt that regardless of the ships I have available, cargo capacity is going to be my primary concern, followed by tanking with speed as some sort of afterthought.

That's not actually how hauling works, and while you're access to usage statistics is better than mine, looking at the package rules for PushX or Red Frog they certainly have more concerns than cargo capacity.

Who's the intended pilot?

The way training times work today, there's no way in hell I'd recommend a dedicated hauler to go for Racial Industrial 5 over an Orca unless they very specifically had no need for a highsec large capacity hauler. The BR and to an extent the DST both occupy niches that, if you have specific hauling needs - wormholes, lowsec - makes them worth pursuing.

Put it like this: In the training time it takes me to get Gallente Industrial V, I can get into an Orca, or bounce all four Racial Industrials to III, and what, three of them? Up to IV.

If, for whatever reason, I'm limited to flying T1's, its easy to give me racial flavour that will be available at a very low skill point investment. If I'm not limited to flying T1s, there's no reason to specialize deep into racial industrials anyway.

Center for Advanced Studies

Gallente Federation

About the Mammoth: I just checked in with Art briefly and they confirmed that they simply don't like the way the Mammoth looks. I'll point them to this thread and see what they have to say about your feedback =)

Mammoth.

Mammoth?

MAMMOTH.

Tell your art department to take a hike. We will spend 50,000 times as many minutes staring at the ship in game as they ever will spend working on it. They've done a good job neatening up some of the Minmatar models recently (Stabber in particular is a nice improvement). But on this they're just wrong. Dead wrong. And there is no conceivable reason to make a needless cosmetic change that clearly will annoy and frustrate 95% of the players who use these ships.

I'm sorry if they hate the skin. But they made it. They gave it to us. Now they're stuck with it.

EvE is supposed to suck. Wait . . . what was the question?

Stay Frosty.

A Band Apart.

Thank you. Thank you for not liking the look of the Mammoth. By coming forward and revealing your disdain for the "look" of this horribly ugly ship you have revealed your intelligence. The Mammoth IS ugly, it was beaten quite hard with the ugly stick. It hit every branch in the ugly tree when it fell out of production. It is soooo ugly it would make a freight train take a dirt road!

This is the entire point of both the Mammoth and the Hoarder, they exist to be ugly. If indeed, they are on the block for revision, then they need to be V3'd to be even more ugly in high-resolution. You have streamlined and purty-fied far to many Minmatar ships, the Industrials need to stay horribly ugly. That is their character, the entire summation of hurried, clunky, use what is at hand MInmatar design philosophy.

I am encouraged by your obvious attention to detail, it has only taken you ten years to realize the obvious - the Mammoth is freakishly butt ugly. Not every ship in Eve needs to be streamlined perfection, we need and demand our ugly be respected, admired and enhanced. It adds character to homogenization.

Keep the Mammoth ugly. In fact, it could stand to be even worse in my opinion.

More ugly in my Eve. Save the Mammoth.

Don't make me go and start a whole other campaign, cause you know I will.

Hidden Agenda

Deep Space Engineering

I have an Iteron, Iteron 3 and 2 Iteron 5s. Only bothered to rig the 5s.Isn't that likely to be the case with the Minmatar Industrials too? Only bother rigging the final one?So this Mammoth change is hurting those who bothered to optimise their ships with rigs.If you have to make this essentially pointless repositioning of Mammoth v Hoarder maybe unfitting the rigs would be nice?

Lucifer's Hammer

A Band Apart.

I'm scratching my head trying to make sense of the "Art" complaints. So far as I can tell, the Mammoth fits well into the Minmatar post-rebellion look. Like the Maelstrom, like the latest version of the Stabber, like the Tornado, it looks like the newer ships they build, to quote Clear Skies, "when they're not trying to escape slavery at the same time." Plus which, you've got the natural progression in hulls - the Hoarder looking like an upgrade/improvement on the Wreathe, the Mammoth looking like an upgrade/improvement on the Hoarder.

Either that, or if you're going to insist on ditching the Mammoth's role and giving it to the Wreathe, then consider doing something innovative with the Mammoth. Maybe use it as a light "jeep carrier", like a smaller version of the Orca with its ship maintenance bay? Or as a fleet support ship, with a fleet cargohold and ship fitting service but no ship maintenance bay? Or maybe combine the two and make the Mammoth a "frigate escort carrier" or something, like the baby flat-tops from World War II.

Give 'em to the Minmatar and the Gallente first, then ask the art department to come up with equivalents for the Amarr and Caldari - more specialized, in keeping with the meta we often see from the Caldari and Amarr of more single-design-ethic ships rather than the more adaptable vessels you see more of from the Minmatar and Gallente. (You know how if you see an Amarr ship, it's almost a sure bet to be armor-tanked, and a Caldari ship's almost certain to be shield-tanked, but you're never quite sure with a Minmatar or Gallente ship?)

Heck, it could even work in-story. Maybe the Minmatar come up with the CVE concept first for the Mammoth, then share it with the Gallente because of their old alliance, and an Iteron variant gets converted over for that, and then the Amarr and Caldari have to play catch-up against the new meta?

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
- Kurt Vonnegurt

Internet Tuff Guys

honestly, just remove all indies from the game and put in i set of Ore manufactured haulers.

Some of us like this option a lot - unfortunately it would mean doing the same for all t2 haulers and all t1/t2 freighters, which would be A: A giant commitment in terms of art asset creation, B: A waste of assets that already exist and C: would probably be hated by a lot of players because of how much flavor and history it would remove from the game.

I have a question for your art department... Why does it take them such a long time to put out sub par art assets? While I understand art assets are "time consuming" by nature in the industry, eve's work load in terms of producing new graphical content is a tiny tiny fraction of other games... No animations and low res textures... Compared to what was produced for Dust (which btw is sub par) ships are a joke. Don't use "giant time commitment" as a reason for anything other than getting new artists. I suggest you all (ccp) go take a look at what modders are producing in their free time and w/o a team to fall back on. Doing so should make you all feel bad.

In all honesty, I think CCP's art department ******* blows... You guys have not even released a high rez texture pack yet which literally has no downside other than consuming a TINY amount of time from maybe a couple of people for a few days...

C C P

C C P Alliance

Thank you. Thank you for not liking the look of the Mammoth. By coming forward and revealing your disdain for the "look" of this horribly ugly ship you have revealed your intelligence. The Mammoth IS ugly, it was beaten quite hard with the ugly stick. It hit every branch in the ugly tree when it fell out of production. It is soooo ugly it would make a freight train take a dirt road!

This is the entire point of both the Mammoth and the Hoarder, they exist to be ugly. If indeed, they are on the block for revision, then they need to be V3'd to be even more ugly in high-resolution. You have streamlined and purty-fied far to many Minmatar ships, the Industrials need to stay horribly ugly. That is their character, the entire summation of hurried, clunky, use what is at hand MInmatar design philosophy.

I am encouraged by your obvious attention to detail, it has only taken you ten years to realize the obvious - the Mammoth is freakishly butt ugly. Not every ship in Eve needs to be streamlined perfection, we need and demand our ugly be respected, admired and enhanced. It adds character to homogenization.

Keep the Mammoth ugly. In fact, it could stand to be even worse in my opinion.

More ugly in my Eve. Save the Mammoth.

Don't make me go and start a whole other campaign, cause you know I will.

C C P

C C P Alliance

Just catching up on the thread. Still hoping to get back to you later today after I've been able to talk with art to get final word on the Mammoth/Hoarder issue.

I can't comment on all your feedback right this moment, but I'll try to hit a few points:

On the Mammoth - As some of you seem to be joining the thread late or not reading the OP, please keep in mind that nothing is changing with the Mammoth model, and it isn't leaving the game. We are merely shifting roles around in a way that will likely make the Hoarder more popular.

On "it wasn't broke, why change it" - I can understand that in a way it didn't feel broken, maybe because there isn't a lot of direct competition between them, but it really was. Tiering has just as many problems here as it does in combat ships. By removing tiers we're adding more legitimate choices for a certain job, which means more interesting gameplay.

Some people have said things like, you've changed a class with X ships into a class with only 2 ships (or some equivalent) - To me this is really hard to understand. The part that makes sense is that by changing the skill requirements(which is happening for all t1 ships in the game as part of tiericide), you went from a choice of ship based on how much you wanted to train, to just choosing the biggest cargo from day 1. This part is not negotiable as it comes from the overall tiericide effort. With that being the case, this balance work changes a class that had one option, to a class that hopefully has at least 8, based on racial preference and purpose.

Finally a quick note on "special bays" - We talked about this option quite a bit here at the office, and also with the CSM. While it does sound fun to add some new purpose (and new depth as a result) to haulers, there were simply too many problems to make this option seem worthwhile right now. There are issues with the level of specialization as it relates to t1 vs t2 ships. There were issues about equality of access, this being the case especially if we gave special bays to only the extra Iterons and the extra Minmatar ship, but also being the case if we gave one special bay to each race. What do we say to the Amarr Ice miner who has to cross train to Gallente? The idea has value, but with new industry work coming down the pipe, we would rather wait a while than assign a problematic role now.

Deep Core Mining Inc.

Caldari State

On the Mammoth - As some of you seem to be joining the thread late or not reading the OP, please keep in mind that nothing is changing with the Mammoth model, and it isn't leaving the game. We are merely shifting roles around in a way that will likely make the Hoarder more popular.

We know that the model itself isn't changing, but the role changing is the issue. If the role changes, very few people will continue to use it. They'll use the Hoarder instead. When I need to use an Indy, it's because I need to move something large or a lot of something. If it takes me two trips with a Mammoth and one trip with a Hoarder, I'm going to use the Hoarder. We've grown attached to the model and wish to continue using it as the go-to T1 Minmatar hauler for high volume goods.

I feel like you've somehow missed the point of the outcry from these last 17 pages.